Improve your listening skills at work

How to become a good meeting listener?

Have you ever thought how would it be if you were focused during all the meetings you take part in? What would that change? What would that give to you? Have you considered time saved because of reduction on repetitions and misunderstandings? Have you thought about increased quality of listening and understanding others during the meetings?

We spend at work far too many hours in the meetings. I do not call it “working time”, because from my perspective it is not. Usually you have to work after the meetings. Sometime in the future we will take care of a smart-meetings, but today I would like us to concentrate on LISTENING. As this is one of the keys to success.

Why I don’t listen during the meetings

People are different. So, there will be many different reasons for not being focused. You can pick one from the below list, but maybe there is more of them.

Reasons…

You are too focused on what you want to say, what is your opinion, view on the case, so at the end you end up being concentrated on your own perspective.

You are worried that you will forget what you want to say.

You are too focused on yourself instead of listening to the others.

You are thinking about something else than the meeting.

You are not interested in the meeting content, this does not concern you or this is something what you do not want to do.

Meeting is too long.

While being on an online meeting or teleconference, you might be trying to do the shopping or some google search …(?)

Depending on the reason for being unfocused we can try to find solutions. I will start from kind of famous one and at the end I will add some more.

Harvard Review from March last year enclosed the secret of being a good listener. And this is exactly

Notes taking

During the studies I realized the most obvious thing. That if I take notes during the lecture I do not have to study later as I remember everything. If in the opposite I was trying to do something at the same time when the teacher was speaking, later I had to invest more time in understanding the content, as I did not remember what the lecture was about.

People know me as a person with the notebook, or Samsung NOTE. I do take notes in the old school manner. My friends buy me notebooks so “I could write”. And even if my writing is ugly, as if I were a doctor, I like soft pens, so I could take my notes during the meetings.

And for many years this notes taking was my solution to be focused.

Margin Notes

Recent study (Harvard Review, March 2017, conducted by Sabina Nawaz) proves the approach is right and what is more it is providing additional improvement to “notes taking”.

The author suggests drawing a line, which will leave a margin, where we can add additional notes, our thoughts or questions we would like to ask. This is called – Margin Notes

The solution “allows you to think, process information, make connections between points of discussion, and ask effective questions instead of blurting out the first thing that comes to mind” (S.Nawaz, HR, 2017).

What are the rules?

Take a page and create a wide margin. In the main body of your notes write down just what the others are saying.

In the margin instead put your ideas, questions, judgments, suggestions and reflections. In this way you put aside your own thoughts. This will help you to concentrate on what the others have to say.

On a contrary, when you are speaking, use those notes from your margin, which are the highest priority, and which have not yet been used. You can also keep some of the notes to be used at a later time, i.e. during separate meeting.

While making your Margin Notes we should:

Write down questions to use them at the proper time

Pay attention to what was not said

Test assumptions

Writing down the notes, enriched by the margin ones, enhances your presence during the meetings, helps you to listen more deeply, gives you the opportunity to participate more productively and at the end helps to get more work done in meetings (S.Nawaz).

How to sharpen your listening skills during the meetings?

Making notes is the first one, but there is couple more to help us become more mindful during the meetings.

Learn meeting agenda first. This is one of the things I like to do. Sometimes I think that we lose too much time on discussing during the meeting what the meeting is about. I like to have a clear plan of the meeting and review material first, because then I am not only focused on the meeting itself but apart from that I have ready questions to ask and the problem can be solved more quickly, as was rethought earlier. In this case I encourage all of you to take some time before the meeting or shorten the meeting by dividing the meeting into 2 parts: preparation time (15 minutes before the meeting) and the meeting (might be that in this case 15 minutes!!! will be enough).

Look at the speaker. Keep an eye contact, show that you listen to him/her. As a result, you will be not only focused on a meeting but apart from that you will also build better relation.

Ask yourself what you can learn. Sometimes you can have meetings with people from other departments. In this way you can learn i.e. something more about their work or way they operate. Ask yourself the question – what you can learn from the other participants. This will definitely help you to be more focused.

Wrap up the meeting. Sum up the key points of the meeting. When you have your notes already, it will be easy for you to wrap up the meeting, indicating the most important points and the actions to be taken. Everybody will be then on the same page:-)

You know I am still searching for some best ideas which will help me to be more focused, more mindful during the meetings. This is one of the things which entirely saves our time and energy. Just imagine how much you can do during the meeting when not only you, but also other participants are full focused, paying attention to everything what takes place? If this would happen than we would be operating on very short and very productive meetings. Isn’t it great?